9 Responses to “CK Episode 19: Tackling Inequality”

You guys are just SO ARROGANT. We know from this comment section that there exists a large army of fair and open-minded Keynesians (like Krugman) ready and willing to think through the details of praxeology, economic calculation, Cantillion Effects and the NAP. Your bad attitude is going to run them all off.

I just wanted to let you all know that the folks at Salon.com clearly listen to every episode of CK AND completely understand Krugman:

Krugman is a wonk. He likes policy. It’s what he writes about and it’s what he cares about. Even his most scathing attacks on Republicans or the conservative movement are, at heart, the lashing-out of a policy nerd scorned. He doesn’t dislike and fear the modern Republican Party because it is conservative. He dislikes and fears it because, he believes, it is utterly indifferent to empiricism and good policy.

Sumner is especially good at pointing out that one moment in history when laissez faire failed requiring violent state intervention. Try it. Ask him why there is an alleged need for violent intervention. I’m certain he will provide a fair and thoughtful answer.

Au contraire. It’s obvious that all of our opponents find us quite credible. Too credible. If they didn’t, they would fairly engage our arguments and calmly refute them. Instead, they either run and hide from them, suppress them or distort them.

I seem to remember Sumner denying the existence of Cantillon Effects and/or the a priori truth that the first people to receive the new funny money are stealing purchasing power from everyone else, especially the powerless and poor. And all that just to solve a problem that does not exist. I don’t recall him pitching a fit about it like he did on the issue of “why the violence”. I don’t pay him that much attention because he won’t answer “why the violence”.

The definition of wealth being the capacity to satisfy one’s preferences, “wealthy” is going to look different for each individual and therefore is necessarily going to be “unequal” from each individual’s perspective of what he would like to have that someone else has.

Also, different people have different consumption preferences, and different people have different capacities to satisfy those preferences, so production is necessarily going to be “unequal” from that same perspective.

Necessarily so. Always. Logically so.

But the definition of wealth being subjective, you can’t even compare wealth between people – they don’t have the same definition of wealth.